


While the Sinners Sin, the Children Play

by cagethesongbird



Series: Classification AU [3]
Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bed-Wetting, Caretaking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Non-Sexual Age Play, alternate universe - littles are known
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25386805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cagethesongbird/pseuds/cagethesongbird
Summary: Not every day is an easy one. Sometimes, you crawl into the closet and wait to be found.
Relationships: Elliot Alderson & Tyrell Wellick
Series: Classification AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820335
Comments: 7
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a bit of domesticity for you. elliot's moved into tyrell's place by this point :)
> 
> edit: I think I accidentally wrote the age play version of "don't take care of me it's rotten work" lmaoo

_Seagulls sing your hearts away_   
_'Cause while the sinners sin, the children play_

_Oh Lord, how they play and play_   
_For that happy day, for that happy day_

-Cat Stevens, Tea For The Tillerman

Tyrell knows – like a premonition sliding over his mind upon waking, rolling over, pushing himself out of bed. It’s not going to be the calm Tuesday he had planned on. Even though that seems impossible – the apartment is still, quiet, warm. Awash in early morning light. He can even hear the birds singing.

There should be no weight on his shoulders as he shuffles into the kitchen, goes through the motions of another morning. But something isn’t right, and the hairs on his neck slowly come to attention.

_Elliot._

Elliot was what was the matter. It was more than unusual for him to not at least be making noise at this hour, shuffling around, maybe getting dressed. But today, there’s nothing but dead silence, and his door is shut tight, when Tyrell knew for a fact it had been left open that night.

Tyrell weighs his options, briefly. But he knows he can’t just wait around for Elliot to come out on his own. Not only was the whole situation too weird to be left alone, but Tyrell would drive himself crazy that way. Not knowing if Elliot was hurt, or wet, or scared.

He sets down his empty coffee mug, his decision made. The door is locked – he knows this without even trying the knob – so he knocks.

Silence. He knocks again, lightly rapping his knuckles against the wood, holding his breath. Hoping for _something,_ anything. Even a sob would be better than nothing.

Once, twice. Three times. He gets dead silence for an answer.

“Elliot?” he calls, into the closed door. Silence, silence. Then more silence.

“ _Elliot?_ ” Tyrell hears the frantic note in his own voice. He doesn’t have much of a choice anymore, though he hates what he must do. It was his obligation to see what was wrong – even if it might piss off his ward.

“Elliot, I hate to do this to you, but I do have the key here. I’m coming in, okay?”

More silence. There’s not even any quiet sniffling, like he’d been crying. Just pure silence, like he wasn’t even in there – but of course he was, he had to be. Tyrell manages to get the key into its slot, his hands shaking with sudden, sick worry.

“Elliot?”

His bed is empty, the rightmost toddler rail pulled down for escape. The blankets have mostly tumbled to the ground, so he can get a full, unobstructed view of the large wet patch in the middle of the (protected) mattress.

But Elliot himself was not in the room. Tyrell squashes his immediate panic, forces himself to calm down. No one had left the apartment. He was _somewhere._

“Elliot, baby, please,” he mutters. “Where did you go?”

Although Tyrell was no detective, he glances around the room in search of clues, feeling mildly unprepared for if Elliot had really gone somewhere. Did he call? Was he allowed, or would that be crossing a boundary?

But the blankets meant he had slept in the bed. The shut and locked door meant he couldn’t have left unless it was out the window.

The open closet meant –

It meant he was thinking like an adult, when Elliot clearly wasn’t.

Tyrell sidesteps a mountain of stuffed toys that hadn’t been put away the night before, nearly knocks his hip into the chest of drawers as he goes. He stumbles, losing his balance.

“Shit,” he mumbles. He needed to work out – domesticity had put him in soft-bellied bliss, but this was ridiculous.

He all but rips the closet all the way open – which is a terrible idea, because Elliot shrieks like he’s been slapped, pushes himself against the closet wall like that will hide him better. His face disappears into clothes.

He’d pushed himself into the farthest corner of the closet, knees to his chest, looking more frightened than Tyrell had ever seen him. Shaking. His breathing was fast enough to call it hyperventilating, and the carpet beneath him was practically a puddle.

Tyrell doesn’t move. His hands are still stuck to the closet door handles, physically holding them open. Elliot weeps openly, tears springing immediately to his eyes with the opening of the door. He doesn’t ever take his eyes off Tyrell, and doesn’t make any kind of noise. The tears come and fall, but Elliot remains silent.

It’s unsettling, and his eyes search Tyrell’s face the entire time, watching his every move. Like Tyrell was the enemy. Like Tyrell was a stranger of unknown motive.

“Elliot,” Tyrell says, gasping. He can’t say much else – he doesn’t know how to proceed. He felt like crying, too, feeling like he’s failed in some way, but he shoves those thoughts into elsewhere. He could deal with himself later.

Elliot gives a low, pitiful whine. It’s the first noise he’s made. “I’m sorry.” It comes out as a whisper, barely audible.

So he was Big, then. Tyrell hadn’t been expecting that – and he couldn’t decide if he thought it was going to make this better, or worse.

“What happened?” he asks, not hesitating to crawl into the closet next to Elliot. Elliot doesn’t move away – just gives a broken little sob – and Tyrell counts that as a win.

“Hadda nightmare,” he mumbles, resting his head on his knees. He’d gone from watching Tyrell’s every move to completely avoiding eye contact. “Bad one.”

Tyrell sighs. “Why didn’t you come get me?”

A pause, a sniffle. His voice is a deadpan. “You were sleepin’.”

Tyrell takes the risk of putting a hand on Elliot’s shoulder. Elliot tenses, as he always did, but he seems to realize the touch is friendly. He relaxes, slowly. Wipes his nose with his sleeve, which Tyrell would probably reprimand under different circumstances.

There’s a moment of Tyrell’s hand simply resting on Elliot’s shoulder, but the way Elliot crashes into him turns it into a hug. Tyrell pats Elliot’s back, and he hiccups.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m sleeping, darling. You were, too. Better to be awake together rather than alone, hm?”

And he knows Elliot knows this. Not only had it been explained to him maybe a dozen times by now, but he had seen the papers. The legally binding contract they signed – that said, in layman’s terms, that Tyrell had to come running. Not that he needed any incentive.

He pauses. “You know I _want_ to take care of you, right? You can always come get me.”

“No, you don’t,” Elliot says, quickly, in rapid-fire burst of speech. “You think you do, but you don’t, Tyrell, you really don’t. I’m fucked in the head, and sometimes I’m literally a baby. Who wants that?”

Tyrell sniffs, indignant. “ _Me._ I just said that.”

Elliot looks up, big eyes still damp. Disbelief is scribbled all over his face, contorting it. “Why?”

In the past, Tyrell’s answers had been things like _love,_ or _loneliness._ Now, he just shrugs. Elliot knew those things, and still, it was as if he was hellbent to make himself feel guilty.

“You’ve never just wanted anything, just because you do?”

Elliot snorts. “I wanted to save the world.”

“Sometimes I think this world is beyond saving,” Tyrell murmurs. “But you’re not.”

A long moment passes. Elliot traces his thumb across his lips, like he intended to put it in his mouth, but he drops his hand before Tyrell has a chance to suggest a binky. He’s beginning to get uncomfortable, cramped in this closet, but doesn’t suggest leaving, either.

“I have Krista today.”

“And that’s what this is about?”

Elliot looks away. “Don’t wanna go. She’s gonna make me talk… ‘bout Dad, today. Don’t want to.”

Tyrell’s heart _breaks._ “I’m so sorry, my love. There shouldn’t even be a need to discuss such things, but there is.” He pauses. His next sentence is going to be a risky one.

“I could go with you, if you’d like.”

He had about a million vacation days he’d yet to use – he’d thrown himself into work after Joanna’s murder: double-time, nights, weekends. He hadn’t wanted to come home to the emptiness, the hole in his heart.

And now he was doing the exact opposite, and privately jumping for joy about it.

He’d offered this before – to accompany Elliot to therapy – but the answer was always _no,_ and the question usually pissed Elliot off. Today must be a special kind of awful, because Elliot just nods, a few tears dripping down his chin.

“Alright,” Tyrell agrees, hoping he doesn’t sound too shocked. “Shall we leave this closet, then?”

“M’wet,” Elliot mumbles, around the thumb that had finally found a place in his mouth.

“Thank you for telling me,” Tyrell says, though he already knew this. “Let’s go fix that.”

“Um, pick me up?”

“Certainly.”

“Um, not so big.”

Tyrell smiles. “Yes, I know.”

It was a good thing Krista had told Tyrell, more than once, to go ahead and bring Little Elliot to her, if ever the situation arose. Elliot had more people on his side than he realized.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> was this only gonna be one chapter when i published it. yes.  
> do i have way too much time to think on this concept due to the virus ruling our world? also yes

_Enclosed spaces,_ Tyrell thinks, mildly panicking. Only mildly – he had done this dance before, and he knew he would do it again. It was like the world’s shittiest game of hide-and-seek, and sometimes both of them ended up in tears.

Elliot liked enclosed spaces. Though Tyrell himself would rather die than go into some of the spaces Elliot managed to squeeze himself into, skinny and short as he was. The kitchen cabinets had been an interesting one – and dangerous. How long had he been breathing chemical fumes?

Tyrell shakes his head, shakes off those thoughts. Irrelevant. He had squished himself under the cabinets before, but he wasn’t there now, what with the child locks. Tyrell checks anyway.

_If I were an Elliot, where would I be?_

Tyrell hadn’t even been expecting to find Elliot at the apartment – he had said he was working late, trying clean up fsociety’s newest escapade. Though Tyrell knew, of course, that he was quietly making it worse. Allowing them infiltration from the inside.

It wasn’t riskless, but it was leagues less risky than being at the arcade, puppeteering. Darlene had assumed the role of ringleader, but Elliot was never out of the loop.

But when Tyrell walked in the door, he saw Elliot’s keys and cellphone, abandoned on the coffee table. He didn’t think much of it – maybe Elliot went to go get something. It was only when he didn’t emerge – from a back room, or the bathroom, or anywhere, really – that Tyrell began to think something was wrong.

His first instinct is to call, but of course, Elliot’s cellphone sits right in front of him. Determined, Tyrell loosens his tie, removes his jacket, and checks the usual suspects.

Not in his closet, or Elliot’s own. Not under their beds. Not under the table, or coffee table. Tyrell takes a one-in-a-million chance, checks the small attic he wasn’t even sure if Elliot was aware of. No dice.

Tyrell sucks at his teeth, frustrated. If Elliot was hiding like this – really hiding, not letting himself be found when he heard Tyrell moving around – something was wrong.

And even just the thought of something be wrong – again, like it always was – makes Tyrell’s heart hurt. Elliot needed a few weeks (or a few years. Or the rest of his life; if Tyrell got his way.) of peace.

Tyrell wished he could do more than pick up after the storm – but he was no weatherman. He couldn’t stop the internal destruction as it happened, or even forecast it.

“Elliot?” he mutters to the living room, running a hand through his hair. “Please come out.”

He waits, listening hard. A door shuts, in the guest bedroom, and Tyrell zeroes in on it. The guest _closet,_ that Tyrell himself hardly bothered with, except to maybe take something from a storage bin.

When he gets to the guest bedroom, Elliot is already standing in the closet doorway, thumb in his mouth. Looking firmly away, like he was guilty of some abhorrent crime.

“You’ll give me a damned heart attack one of these days,” Tyrell mutters, running a hair through his hair. “What’d you take off for?”

“F’rgot you lived here,” he mutters, face pink. He’s got Froggie wrapped in his arms – which meant he had been home long enough to retrieve the beloved stuffed frog. Tyrell doesn’t wonder why he hadn’t stayed late, anymore.

And though he was a little startled by that idea, that he didn’t live in his own apartment, he could easily put the pieces together. Elliot had forgotten he no longer lived alone, and ran for cover when a stranger unceremoniously opened his door.

Tyrell smiles a very relieved smile.

“That’s okay. I know you forget sometimes,” he says, kind. “But I didn’t knock down the door, you know. I used my key – burglars don’t usually have those.”

“Yeah,” Elliot mutters, soft. “But my dad did.”

Tyrell freezes, and Elliot’s eyes go wide.

“No – you’re not him, I know that. I didn’t forget that,” Elliot quickly amends. “But – sometimes bad people don’t have to break down the doors. To get inside.”

Tyrell thinks briefly of his own father. The drunk who beat his mother whenever he had one too many. There were always kisses and apologizes afterwards – but Tyrell never forgot the click of the key in the lock, after his father’s bar crawl. The dread that sound meant.

“I know what you mean,” he says. Elliot is still loitering in the doorway, nursing his thumb.

“You wanna come give me a hug?”

Elliot looks like he might cry. “You’re not mad?”

Tyrell makes a face. Of course, he wasn’t – he was just glad Elliot seemed okay, for the most part. “Remind me what I have to be mad about?”

“I forgot you lived here!” he cries, like Tyrell should have known, and then should have been mad.

Tyrell shakes his head. “You didn’t mean to. You didn’t do it to be mean. It just happens to you sometimes. That’s nothing to be angry about.” _Sad, maybe,_ Tyrell thinks. _But not angry._

Elliot has the most pissy-looking expression as he submits to a hug, as if trying to keep up the imaginary tension, and Tyrell laughs. “Are you tired there, _sötnos_?”

“It’s not even nine,” Elliot mumbles, face against Tyrell’s shoulder. He smelled like corporate America – like cubical spaces and shit coffee. Elliot closes his eyes. He _was_ tired, but he had a harder head than even Tyrell realized, sometimes.

“That’s not what I asked,” Tyrell murmurs, rubbing his back. “You worked hard today.”

“So did you,” Elliot says, stubborn. Like that proved he wasn’t tired.

“No, I really didn’t,” Tyrell laughs. “Why do you think I’m at home with you so much? I hate that place as much as you do – and it’s not like they need me, anyhow. Senior VP is useless position. My so-called responsibilities are just my signature on forms.”

Elliot looks doubtful that anyone hated Evil Corp as much as he did, but he says nothing. “M’tired.”

“I knew you were,” Tyrell says, matter of fact. “Early bedtimes all around. You need to be changed?”

“Mm.” Elliot doesn’t so much agree as he acknowledges, but that’s good enough. He didn’t fuss over things like that, even if he didn’t exactly go willingly.

“Shall we?” Tyrell asks, extending a hand, and is gratified when Elliot skips right over that and holds out his arms to be held.

“Okay, that works too,” Tyrell says, grinning, and scoops Elliot up.


End file.
